Articles

Stage Gate Process Tools & Techniques Within Enterprise Excellence

Author(s):

Rick Hepp

Trainer, Coach & Mentoir for Enterprise Excellence, Consultant and Trainer

A “Next Level Evolution” model for Operational Excellence to integrate with Business Transformation under the broader concept of Enterprise Excellence was discussed in BPMinstitute.org article in May 2017¹.

As Part of a Business Transformation and Enterprise Excellence strategy, how can the business be challenged to innovate and improve products?

A Robust New Product Introduction (NPI) Process should be a core competency at all companies.

Let’s take a look at the methodology and set of tools/techniques of a Stage Gate Process.²

5 Steps to Creating a Process-Centric Organization Without Losing Human Touch!

Author(s):

Anthony Bergs

Digital Marketing Specialist, Writers Per Hour

A process-centric organization works on the principle of dividing a task or a project into separate, individually executable stages to get efficient results. These processes go through their development lifecycle including stages of design, development, testing and quality check, etc. However, maintaining a ‘human-touch’ within the organization becomes tedious!

Such organizations tend to be exclusively result-oriented, as they divide projects into stages and the output of each stage should be as per the organization’s standards.

The attributes of a process-centric company are:

The Forces Driving Process and Operating Model Changes

Author(s):

Andrew Campbell

Mr, Ashridge Executive Education

I keep a checklist of the technology trends to think about when redesigning processes or operating models. Things like “automation” or “digitization” or “mobility” or “social media”. I am always trying to improve my checklist, which led me to two recent articles listing trends to think about, one from BCG and one from McKinsey.

The BCG report “Twelve forces that will radically change the future of work” by Vikram Bhalla, Susanne Dyrchs and Rainer Strack has five trends that seem to be about operations (the other seven are about changes in customer desires or the workforce). The five are:

Crowdsourcing Considerations for Business Architects

Author(s):

Simona Lovin

Director of Operations and Strategic Initiatives, Leidos

1. The Real World

Architects (i.e., building architects) have been grappling for a long time with the challenge of making architecture accessible to the general public, both as a form of artistic expression and as a practical discipline rooted in utilitarian considerations. What they have found is that most people equate “architecture” with “buildings” – i.e., the final product – without giving much thought to the creative conceptualization and design work which long-precedes the actual construction. Exceptions to this rule are famous buildings such as the Guggenheim Museum in New York or the Sydney Opera House, where the otherness of the edifice itself suggests that both artistry and engineering must have had a hand in the design and planning of the construction.

The Key Ingredient to the Implementation of Operational Excellence = Training

Author(s):

Marvin Wurtzel

Faculty Member, BPMInstitute.org and Principal Consultant, Marvin M. Wurtzel & Associates, Inc.

Implementing operational excellence so that the enterprise benefits is an important issue that needs close examination. An operational excellence strategy model implementation should result in a business management system that encourages process improvement so that the organization’s key performance indicators (KPIs) benefit. In order to accomplish this successfully we must have the appropriate skills available to the organization.

GDPR is a Process Issue

Author(s):

Ian Gotts

Founder & CEO, Elements.cloud

By May 25, 2018 – less than 100 days away – any company doing business with subjects of the European Union must comply with the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) stringent rules or face fines up to 4% of revenue. Underpinning the regulations is the principle of “Privacy by design” which means compliance cannot be an add-on, but must be baked into the operational DNA of the organization. It is a process issue as much as a customer data one.

No More AI Winters: Really!!

Author(s):

James Sinur

CEO, Fleuresque

History teaches us that there were two large AI Winters in the past. One starting in the mid 1970s and another in the late 1980’s There were very clear reasons for the last two AI Winters, but most of the technical and cost issues are gone. The wild card is how humans accept AI this time around. My bet is against another brutal winter. This does not mean there won’t be cold snaps, but a 15-20 year freeze out doesn’t seem likely now.

The First AI Winter:
It was caused by a couple of major factors. The first and foremost was the lack of computer power. The examples that were put forward were “toy” solutions that really did not appeal to the investors at all. This set off a period of infighting about Natural Language Processing (NLP) in the AI community which scared off the investors for a long time.

The Second AI Winter:

The Pace Setting Business Architect: Lessons From the Field

Author(s):

Dean Heltemes

Senior Director, Ameriprise Financial

You don’t need me to tell you that the pace of disruption and change in business is already immense and is accelerating. The Wall Street Journal several years ago published an interesting comparison of how long it takes for a new product to reach 50 million users. Updates to this have been popping up all over social media recently that demonstrate the acceleration:

How to Be Agile in a Non Agile Organization (Part 2): Aligning Agile projects to corporate reporting structures

Author(s):

Jamie Cooke

Managing Director, Both Hemispheres, LLC

This is the second in a series of articles that will give you strategies for aligning your Agile work to your organizational structures. The first article focused on delivering Agile projects within existing Project, Process and Quality Management frameworks. In this article, the focus is on delivering Agile projects within the existing corporate reporting structures of your organization.

Agile approaches provide a number of mechanisms for tracking progress, including formal reports (e.g. executive dashboards), status update tools (e.g. WIP boards and product backlogs), and ongoing communication with stakeholders.

The ideal Agile reporting environment would leverage these tools without asking staff to do extra (often redundant) work to meet corporate reporting requirements. Specifically, this would involve using:

Business Process Modeling in Higher Education Institutions

Author(s):

Kevin Nelson

Editor-in-chief, EliteEssayWriters

Embrace business process modeling!

All higher education establishments, from small colleges to large campus institutions, are involved in some complex processes to deliver effective teaching and learning. It is usually plain to see that there is room for improvement for the methods used. The issue now becomes, how do they tackle the problems and what do they tackle first? The implementation of new systems then becomes imperative since it’s usually a drive for considering how to carry out the business process.

Business process modeling is the graphical representation of a company, in this case, higher education institutions, as a means to identify potential improvements. They can achieve this through different graphics methods such as data flow diagrams or the use of flowcharts among other types. 25% of organizations worldwide are conducting training in business management systems, so quite a number of institutions are getting onboard.

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